R. Walter Slauch, Central Montco Technical High School director for the past 18 years, is scheduled to retire at the end of the current school year.
Submitted photo — Central Montco Technical High School

PLYMOUTH >> When Central Montco Technical High School opened its doors on Sept. 6, 1967, the 19.6 acres it occupies at Plymouth Road and New Hope Street in Plymouth Township were still known as the Quartuccio Dairy Tract, and the brand new Central Montgomery County Area Vocational Technical School had already been dubbed “the vo-tech.”

Fifty years later, CMTHS has familiarized countless teens from the Colonial, Norristown Area and Upper Merion Area school districts with everything from auto repair and cosmetology to the visual arts and sophisticated medical know-how. Along the way, today’s state-of-the-art complex has evolved way beyond the $2.8 million school former Director Paul L. Ruzicka describes in his “History of the Central Montgomery County Area Vocational Technical School.”

Director R. Walter Slauch has piloted CMTHS for the past 18 years and will continue to call the shots during the school’s golden anniversary year. But next July 1, Slauch will turn over the director’s reins to Seth Schram, a former CMTHS culinary instructor who also served as assistant CMTHS director when Slauch assumed his post in 2000 and has been an administrator with Chester County’s career and technical school system since 2007. Schram is currently assisting Slauch on a transitional basis.

Like his successor, Slauch was no stranger to CMTHS when he arrived in the director’s office. During assistant principal stints at both Upper Merion Area and Plymouth Whitemarsh high schools, he had served as tech school liaison. Not surprisingly, he’s seen “a lot of changes over the years … and numerous high points.” But Slauch figures the complex’s $20 million renovation roughly a decade ago is probably the most memorable.

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“There’s been a lot of water under the bridge here, but I’d have to say that stands out for me,” he says. “When I came here, this building had had very little done to it during the preceding years, and it didn’t reflect what I saw as the future of career-technical education. To their credit, our three home schools were willing to invest a significant amount of money into its future. I’m very proud of that — our ability to pull off that project and rebuild as a school that does reflect technology and the things that are going on in industry.

“We try to update our curriculum along the same lines … keeping our focus on the fact that it’s important for us to change as industry changes because of technology and the various processes and procedures happening out there and teaching young people the sorts of things they’re going to actually be able to use when they get out of here. And we’re not only teaching them skills of industry. When you layer in all of our student organizations and clubs, we’re also teaching them what we refer to as soft skills … leadership skills, things along those lines.”

That said, CMTHS’s close relationships with potential employers from the area work world (via the school’s occupational advisory committees) and members of its joint operating committee are critical, Slauch notes.

“Approximately 65 percent of our kids continue their education after they graduate,” he continues. “That includes everything from a two-year trade school to an Ivy League college. But our programs are all based, number one, on the ability of our students to get an entry-level position right out of here if they don’t choose to continue their education in a formal setting. With that in mind, I would say that our relationship with business and industry — the number of business and industry partners we have — is something that really sets us apart.

“The premise of career and technical education is that you’re working hand in hand with the people who are ultimately going to serve as employers. What better way to achieve that than to say to someone, ‘You’re going to be the person who hires [our students]. What do we need to do to make that happen?’”

And it’s no secret that skilled workers are at a premium, the CMTHS spokesman adds.

“Over the past four or five years, I’ve become very active with the Pennsylvania Association of Career and Technical Administrators,” says Slauch, PACTA’s 2016-17 president. “That’s given me the opportunity to work at the legislative level and testify before several Senate and House commissions that were looking at funding for career and technical education. One was a Senate committee that was looking at what they call the skills gap in Pennsylvania. Basically, we have all of these manufacturing-type jobs and no one to fill them. Agricultural jobs, too. I don’t know that people realize this, but Pennsylvania’s economy is based on agriculture. We have all this farmland in Pennsylvania, but nobody wants to farm it, including the children of farmers.”

With that in mind — as well as the misconception that career and technical schools are dumping grounds for low achievers — its administrators and teachers continually analyze and, if necessary, restructure CMTHS’s offerings.

“We try to create programs that present opportunities to a wide range of students, and I believe that has worked out well for us because if you look at the school’s population, I would suggest that it has changed over the last couple of decades … not only in Central Montco but in the region,” Slauch says. “We still have very traditional ‘vocational’ programs like cosmetology and automotive, but we’ve also brought in programs that deal with other aspects of business and industry. The medical industry, for example. Our allied health program has produced four or five doctors. Even so, the perception of career and technical education is such that we still have a lot of work to do to get to the point where people are completely accepting of what we do.

“Our home schools are supportive … without a doubt. But in this region, the badge of honor is the number of kids who go to college … versus the attitude in some regions of the state where the opposite is true. Montgomery County tends to be very academically oriented. Very white-collar. But people forget, or just don’t know, we’re sending kids to college, too.

“The bottom line for me is, I would like people to understand and appreciate the value of career and technical education and the endless possibilities and opportunities it gives young people. It really is a program that allows young people to focus on their interests and … their talents. They come here because they chose to come here, not because we’re forcing them. So, right out of the gate, you have kids who have said, ‘Yes … this is where I want to go to school.”

According to Slauch, annual enrollment has remained steady at some 600 “for years.” Students split their academic day between CMTHS and their home schools — primarily Plymouth Whitemarsh, Norristown Area and Upper Merion Area high schools. Some curriculum-related services are open to the public, a student-run preschool playgroup, beauty salon and restaurant among them. Additional information is available by calling 610-277-2301 and at cmths.org.